The longtime Astros closer will be joined by two others in Cooperstown this Summer
For the second year in a row, the Baseball Writers sent a three-person group to Cooperstown. Ichiro Suzuki and CC Sabathia made it in their first election, while longtime Astro closer Billy Wagner made it on his tenth and final try. Those three, along with Veterans Committee picks Dave Parker and Dick Allen, will serve as Baseball’s Hall of Fame Class of 2025.
It’s a pretty well-rounded bunch, spearheaded by the first Japanese player in Cooperstown history. Ichiro, in his first ever ballot, fell just one vote shy of unanimity (393/394), tying him with Derek Jeter for the second-best performance in BBWAA ballot history. The right fielder finished with 3089 hits over nineteen seasons with the Mariners, Yankees, and Marlins, thanks in part to nine straight 200-hit campaigns to start his MLB career.
That total is made all the more impressive by the fact that his debut season in the US came at the age of 27, making him one of the latest-debuting Hall of Famers in history; if you count his nine seasons in Japan before that, he has a staggering 4367 professional hits in his career, which started at the age of 18 and lasted until he was 45 (stats from Baseball-Reference unless otherwise stated, by the way).
It’s hard to argue against Suzuki’s case, which includes both the 2001 AL MVP and Rookie of the Year Award, plus a pair of batting titles, three Silver Sluggers, and a full ten All-Star Selections and Gold Gloves. The Mariners have already announced that they’ll be retiring his number #51 (no word yet on whether his predecessor for the number, Randy Johnson, can expect a similar honor later).
There was an outside chance that he would hit 100%, as he was still perfect through all 216 Early ballots in Ryan Thibodaux’s Ballot Tracker, but alas, that was not the case. We’ll see in the coming days if the one No vote steps forward (and the tracker will continue to update as more voters reveal their ballots), but it’s worth keeping in mind that we still don’t know who the one vote against Derek Jeter was back in 2020, so we may just never learn.
Fellow ballot newcomer CC Sabathia was also looking strong entering the announcement, cruising in with 92.6% Early vote rate and finishing at 86.8% (well above the necessary 75%). The big southpaw established himself as one of the aces of the 2000s, picking up six All-Star selections in nineteen seasons (split between the Yankees, Indians, and a brief stint with the Brewers) and winning the 2007 AL Cy Young Award; he probably would have won the Award in back-to-back seasons had he not been traded between leagues at the deadline in 2008, but his historic stretch run led the Brewers to the postseason.
Sabathia became the seventeenth member of the 3000 strikeout club in his final season, to go with a 251-161 career record and a 3.74 career ERA (a 116 ERA+) over 3577.1 innings. Those numbers look even better as the role of starting pitching in the game has continued to change since his day. CC is the first starting pitcher elected to the Hall by the BBWAA since 2019 (Roy Halladay and Mike Mussina), and we’re probably in for another mini-drought on that front now that he’s in; the next best bet is probably Zack Greinke, scheduled to debut on the ballot in 2029 unless he makes a comeback?
The final member of the trifecta is Billy Wagner, longtime Astros closer (plus shorter stops with the Mets, Phillies, Braves, and Red Sox). It was Wagner’s tenth and final chance before aging off the writers ballot, and he seemed like an easy shot after falling just five votes shy last year; in the end, he wound up jumping by nearly ten full points, to 82.5%.
Wagner’s career was relatively short, just sixteen seasons and 903.0 Innings long, but dominant. He racked up 422 total saves, eighth all-time and fifth at the time of his retirement, with 1196 strikeouts and a 2.31 career ERA (187 ERA+) to go with it. His 11.9 K/9 rate is best all-time by a wide margin among pitchers with 900 career innings; the only other pitchers to even hit 11.0 are all still active (Blake Snell leads the quartet at 11.2), and after those four, the next closest to Wagner is his former set-up man Octavio Dotel all the way down at 10.8. It will be interesting to see if the Astros also retire Wagner’s #13, given that new signing Christian Walker was just announced with that number (Walker wore #53 in Arizona, so maybe he’s open to switching?).
With the inductees out of the way, we can move on to the runners-up who will be returning next year. For the eighth time in the last decade, we had a player finish between 70 and 75%, as third-time candidate (and former-Astro) Carlos Beltrán finished at 70.3%. That’s wound up being nineteen votes shy of induction, although it’s quite the jump from his 57.1% finish last year.
On the other hand, it can seem like a bit of a disappointment, as the Ballot Tracker’s Early vote had Beltrán trending at 81.5%; that’s actually a record for them, the highest Early vote total to not finish above 75% since they’ve kept track. That means that voters who haven’t revealed their ballots supported him at a rate of about 56.7%.
That can seem a little low, but it’s worth noting that he’s always done better among early votes. In fact, this is actually an 11.5% improvement on how he did with the delayed and private voters last year, which is not bad at all. We’ll see how it breaks down further over the next few days as more voters reveal how they voted, and I’ll be especially curious to see how those numbers shake out.
I went into this in more depth in my last article, but early-reveal voters, voters who reveal their ballots after the announcement, and fully-private voters can all behave distinctly, and Beltrán is one of the cases where they differ a little more than usual. Late-Reveal Voters tended to follow the Early-Reveal ones, albeit at a slight delay, while his Private voters actually ticked slightly downward from 2023 to 2024. Did that trend hold in his 2025 vote breakdown, or did he see more evenly-distributed gains this time? That’s an area where we’ll still need to wait and see.
Either way, he should be well-positioned to make the Hall next year. As mentioned, he was only nineteen votes shy this time, and just among already-public voters, we know he converted 28 former No voters to Yes. His public flips the last two years have, on net, been +26 and +31 in his favor. On top of that, the next ballot is looking emptier than the last few years (more on that in a moment), which has generally been a good sign for holdovers.
Beltrán ended up leapfrogging Andruw Jones this year. After finishing ahead of Carlos last time, Andruw slipped behind him this time, to just 66.2%. That is an improvement over his 2024 total, but one of just 4.6 points. That means he’ll need to pick up 8.8% over his two final ballots before aging off if he wants to avoid falling to the Veterans Committee. That might seem questionable for him at the moment; after a ballot debut at just 7.3% back in 2018, Jones began ascending rapidly, going from 19.4% to 33.9% to 41.4% to 58.1% from 2020 to 2023. But as mentioned, in the two elections since, Jones has only risen a combined 8.1 points.
I think it’s mostly an issue of bad timing, though; that 2020 to 2023 spurt coincided with a lot of space opening up on ballots, which was also around the time as Jones went from the eleventh- or twelfth-biggest priority to the seventh- or eighth-. The last few years, meanwhile, saw a quartet of big name newcomers debut and jump the line (Ichiro, Sabathia, Adrian Beltré, and Joe Mauer) at the same time that a bunch of other big-vote candidates were finishing up their runs (Todd Helton, two separate Wagner campaigns, Gary Sheffield’s final year on the ballot).
Now Andruw Jones enters the 2026 ballot as one of the two big holdover names, alongside Beltrán. And on top of that, next year’s crop of newcomers is one of the weakest in memory: Cole Hamels and Ryan Braun are the only names above even 40 career bWAR. Historically, that situation has led to big pick-ups among returning names. Making up the 35 vote shortfall shouldn’t be impossible to overcome in one year like that, and even if he doesn’t quite make it, he’ll likely finish close enough to make his tenth ballot an easy shot in, something like what Wagner saw this year.
Another big pick-up case for 2026 will be Chase Utley, who made a double-digit leap all the way up to 39.8%. Finishing above 50% next year feels fairly certain, and with the number of freed-up votes, he might even make it all the way to 60%. Induction is still several years away (just eyeballing it, I’d guess 2028 or 2029?), but this was only Utley’s second ballot, so he’s got plenty of time to work with.
After those three, we have the largely-stagnant PED block. Álex Rodríguez went from 34.8% to 37.8%, Manny Ramírez went from 32.5% to 34.3%, and Andy Pettitte went from 13.5% to 27.9%. Pettitte’s performance looks like a bit of a jump, but I think it’s mostly that “going from 11th/12th-priority to 9th/10th-priority” phenomenon that I mentioned for Jones. I don’t see him rising above A-Rod or Manny at least, as they’ve both stagnated pretty hard. Also, next year will be Manny’s final ballot, so you can almost certainly write off his chances for now.
Félix Hernández rounds out our top ten, finishing at 20.6%, and that one actually kind of shocks me. I was a little surprised that he was trending so well with Early Voters (24.1%), but I was really expecting the Private voters to drop his total into the mid-teens or lower. Maybe this is a sign that voters are adjusting their expectations for starting pitchers? As mentioned, I think King Félix has a Hall argument as a short-career/high-peak guy, but I hope that the writers also give this kind of consideration to other starters going forward, like Hamels next year.
As for Hernández, we’ll have to watch how his candidacy develops going forward. Like I said, there will be a lot of freed up votes next year, and it’s hard to see most of those going to the steroid guys. And 2027 won’t be much more crowded, likely dropping Beltrán, Jones, and Ramírez, while adding Buster Posey and… maybe Jon Lester gets some votes? Things won’t really pick up until 2028 or so, which is plenty of time for Utley and Hernández to build some momentum.
Everyone after this point failed to hit 20% of the vote, which isn’t a death sentence for their chances, but it can be rough. I’m glad to see Bobby Abreu move up to 19.5% of the vote in his sixth try; maybe he can make some leaps in the next few years too, although 55% in four years would be a high bar to clear. Not unthinkable; we actually have had some players achieve that in recent history (Helton, Scott Rolen, Larry Walker, Mike Mussina, Edgar Martínez), although most of them were better players than Abreu. But like I said, we have two relatively light ballots coming up, and Abreu is in that peak “11/12 to 9/10” spot, so he may see a wave of votes coming his way.
Jimmy Rollins was actually tied with Abreu in 2024, and this year he finishes a hair behind him at 18.0%. I’m not as invested in his Hall case as some other players, but it is worth mentioning that he’s now almost doubled his votes since his 2022 ballot debut. Omar Vizquel is just behind him at 17.8%, which is virtually tied with his performance last year; two more tries until he ages off the ballot. Dustin Pedroia was just the third ballot rookie to stay above the 5% minimum to return next year, finishing at 11.9%, while Mark Buerhle reached a new personal best at 11.4% in his fifth go-around. I don’t know that any of these guys will see big pick ups going forward, but it could happen.
The only other candidates to stay above the 5% line were Francisco Rodriguez (10.2%), David Wright (8.1%), and Torii Hunter (5.1%). Wright and Hunter both dropped off from last year’s total, and K-Rod improved from last year in his third try, but still didn’t match his debut total. The ballot seems too empty next year for Wright and Hunter to continue dropping like this, but I also wouldn’t bet on them staying above the line.
Rodriguez can probably survive though; Wagner’s election clears out a direct comparison that probably works against him, and he can reign as the unquestioned best closer on the ballot until… I guess at least 2030? In that regard, he’s probably lucky he held on one year longer than Joe Nathan. Either way, I’m not sure that distinction helps him much, but it probably keeps his chances alive for his full ten years.
The other ten candidates all fell short of the 5%/20 vote minimum to come back next time, and all of them were guys seeing their first ballot. I do think there were some good names here this time, though. Russell Martin and Brian McCann were both interesting candidates, and depending on what you made of their pitch framing numbers, they maybe had a Hall case. Unfortunately, they came in at just 2.3% and 1.8%, respectively, each under 10 votes. Ben Zobrist also lands here. I thought that Foolish Baseball made an interesting Hall case for him, as a unique sort of “high peak/short career” guy who gets a lot of extra credit for both postseason heroics and being at the vanguard of a big shift in how rosters are constructed. It seems that no writers bought that argument, though, as Zobrist did not pick up any votes.
So that’s my sketch of how the next few years go: Beltrán and Jones make for a rare double-center fielder class in 2026, 2027 is maybe Buster Posey and/or maybe Andruw Jones if he misses next year, and Chase Utley is set-up well enough by that point that he can squeeze into either the Class of 2028 or 2029 despite how crowded those ballots will be. But before we get to all of that, there’s one more big day: Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia, and Billy Wagner will be inducted on July 27th.